I invite you to think for a moment of those you have known who faced a crossroads - a place that tested their faith. A woman loses her job, and confronts the specters of financial hardship and possible relocation. A man faces his future as a suddenly single person, a status he neither expected nor desires. A teenager weighs the pros and cons of continuing in a relationship her parents would not approve of, if they knew what was really going on. Have you known someone facing crossroads like these? Have you been there, or are you perhaps now at a crossroads? Then welcome to the Christian life, in the context of our murky, sin-pocked world. Exactly what is a person of faith supposed to do?

We might start by asking: what does it mean to have faith? How would you define it? Some would say “faith” means believing in God, or welcoming Jesus Christ into our heart. True enough. Those with a bent for Bible study might just say “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1). A great definition, to be sure - though a bit on the heady side. But in the hazy, uncharted-future-circumstances of our daily lives, speaking practically, what does it mean to have faith?

I want to suggest we test drive this definition: faith is the breathless but determined attempt to keep up with what we see God doing in the world. That is, faith does consider what God has done in the past, but is primarily interested in what God is doing right now to give us a place in the future. Faith also asks what part we can play in God’s unfolding plans, on earth as they are in heaven. Faith runs to keep up with what God is doing - hence the breathlessness. Admittedly, there’s more to having faith than this. But I think Peter found himself ‘chasing after what God was doing in the world’ down in Joppa, when he was confronted with a future he never expected. And faith was all he had!

In Acts 11 we hear Peter’s testimony before a board of inquest that is demanding to know: “have you lost your mind, Peter, going out and baptizing Gentiles, ignorant, unclean foreigners, into the community of Christ?” Peter’s answer is not so much a defense of what he has done, as it is a halting, partial account of faith - what Peter sees God doing in the world. The issue is Peter’s eating with Gentiles, non-Jews, and by implication, his failure to live as a faithful example to them. His baptizing of Gentiles seems to imply that the Law of Moses just does not matter to the mission of the Church. These are serious charges, in a brand-new religious movement that is at this moment still essentially Jewish - following a Jewish messiah!

Peter begins his testimony by describing something weird that happened to him on a housetop in Joppa, a major port city that today lies buried beneath the suburbs of Tel Aviv, Israel. Peter has come there to preach Christ to his fellow Jews, and is staying at the home of a leather-worker - a member of a professional group that most Jews considered quite unclean. Peter is up on the tanner’s roof, praying. As he recounts later, he has this strange vision of a sheet lowered from Heaven, with all manner of furry animals and reptiles and birds on it. He hears a heavenly voice, telling him to eat - a repulsive idea to a devout Jew, for whom such animals are off-limits.

Three times the sheet is lowered; three times Peter repeats his objection: “No way, Lord, no nasty, unclean critter’s going to touch this mouth!” Then the answer comes back: “What God has made clean, you don’t get to call nasty.” The Bible says Peter is “greatly puzzled” at this vision…. But he doesn’t have long to think about it: downstairs there comes a loud knock. An officer of the despised army that is occupying Judea, the same army that murdered Jesus, has sent servants to bring Peter, so that the Roman centurion Cornelius can “hear what [he] has to say” (Acts 10:22). God, who is orchestrating this entire scene, prompts Peter to get up, get over himself and go with them.

You know, sometimes the stories of the Bible seem to us like flannelgraphs - two-dimensional tales in which God speaks and people get the point. In our own lives things are most often not so cut-and-dry. We know what it is to wait for answers from a silent God, to wonder about how God’s wisdom will reach us, we who have mixed motives and many priorities to weigh when we make big decisions. We might wish God would just show up and give us a vision, tell us which door to open and which one to leave closed.

Peter, he opens the door to Cornelius’ servants. Now we (who eat everything from pig knuckles to Moon Pies) have to remember how hard this is for Peter. To us, Jewish dietary rules seem quite silly. But in Peter’s time, Hebrews told stories about how, a few centuries before, Greek soldiers had gone from village to village, forcing Jews to eat pork. Many of their grandmothers and grandfathers had chosen death over betraying God’s Law. That’s how seriously they took such matters. It wasn’t about having pork; it was about being faithful to God whatever it cost.

Peter knew Jews did not eat with Gentiles. There was no precedent for baptizing non-Jews. There was every reason to believe that all who were called to follow Christ had to become Jews. Here, now, on a rooftop in Joppa, Peter faces a pivot point for the mission of the Church and indeed for all human history. The way of Christ is something new. It requires new wineskins, and it is going to have a place for a pagan Roman centurion, and who knows who else, in its future.

How about you? What place does the Good News of Jesus Christ have in your life? Do you struggle to live as if the Gospel were only a rumor from a distant place, a word from the past, as you toil and labor to secure a place in the future? Do the accumulated worries of how you will live - where or with whom, how you will support yourself - weigh heavily upon you?

Peter, confused and painfully off-balance, had to face the prospect that God wanted something very different from him than what his whole life had led him to expect. And all this occurred in Joppa (a detail Luke mentions no less than ten times), the very city to which Jonah once went when he was running from what God had appointed him to do - to be an agent of mercy and salvation unto the Gentiles. (You see, God has this powerful sense of irony!) Again it is at Joppa, with its million possible pathways through the sea, that one called by God again has to choose: are you going to run, or are you going to run to keep up with what God is doing in the world?

It seems to me, because God is great, that every person will have Joppa moments at some time in her life, in his life. Joppa is the place we get to by our own efforts, the place we look around and say, “Oh, I’ve been blessed. Look how much comfort and continuity I have in my life!” But at Joppa, we get a wake-up call. God called Jonah to leave Joppa and preach to the enemy. God called Peter in Joppa to get up and go have lunch with the enemy. Both men came to the crossroads of land and sea. Jonah tried to withstand God and run (that didn’t work). Peter recognized that God is not to be withstood, and despite his confusion, Peter went.

When we reach a crossroads of some great, lasting significance, we are wise to pray for God’s guidance. “Lord, tell me if I should take this job” , we pray. “Tell me if I should date this person, marry this person. Tell me if it’s time for me to move, or if I should stay and wait.” But in Joppa moments, we find that when God calls, it may not be to validate what we really wanted to do anyway, or what others expect us to do, or what all our habits up to that point lead us to do. Faith is partnership with the God who called and sent Jonah and Saul and Peter. If our search for God’s call on our lives doesn’t leave open at least the possibility of a change in direction - well, that’s hardly ‘running breathlessly to keep up,’ is it? That’s keeping God around to sign off on our own plans - plans which may not be part of God’s bigger design at all.

So if you ever prayed to know God’s will and ended up feeling even more confused, maybe feeling dislocated - friend, hear the Good News. Dislocation can be a sign of encountering the true God - the God of the Bible. God is always inviting us, as Jesus invites us in baptism, to become part of something much bigger than ourselves. If you are at a crossroads at this time, if you are praying or have ever prayed for God’s will about this or that imagined future, and have been disappointed when you did not receive the answer you hoped for - don’t give up. Remember that God is in charge of the future, all of it, not just your little corner of it. And God has a place for you in that future. There may be times when, like Jonah, that will make you want to run and hide. But who are we to withstand God? So when we get to Joppa, I suggest taking a deep breath. You may need that breath to run.

Thanks be to God.